Science Journalism: Selling Without Sensationalism

As part of its RELATE project, EJC presents the second in its series on pitching best practice.

In this short interview with Professor Mark Brake of the University of Glamorgan (UK), we look into the pitfalls of science writing, including dealing with editors and publishers.

How do you prevent dumbing down? Who is to blame for sensationalism? These and other questions add more pieces to the puzzle of selling your story. The idea is simple: to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Please see related interviews with Dr Markus Lehmkuhl and Seema Jilani, a RELATE participant and fellow of Glamorgan University.

—-

Can you give any special tips for pitching a science story?

MB: I always try to link any story I write with something topical or contemporary. That holds for whatever I publish: either on my own account or for the University of Glamorgan. But it’s important to remember: if you make it too topical, the story may have a rather short shelf-life.

By focusing on the topical, do you also run the risk of ‘dumbing down’?

MB: I think if you do it skilfully then it won’t be dumbed down too much. The important thing to be aware of is the difference in attitudes. Journalists’ news values aren’t necessarily the same as those of scientists. So there is always that discrepancy.

The title of one of your articles is ‘Taking the fiction out of science’s portrayal’? What exactly is the problem?

MB: The article that I wrote for The Times, Taking the fiction out of science’s portrayal was specifically about a science fiction course that I used to run at Glamorgan. The course was flagged up during the ‘dumbing down’ debate, which I found a misrepresentation by some elements of the media (though not by science journalists). The more narrow-minded elements of the media had the habit of claiming that such courses were ‘dumbed down’ without actually speaking with me or anyone on the course and without knowing anything at all about the content. That is a very shallow kind of journalism.

So is just the media to blame for this simplification and sensationalism? Can you give any examples?

MB: Well, I think it’s the publishing industry in general. My first of six books – all communicating science to different publics at different levels – was about the relationship between science fiction and science. I remember my editor telling me to make my hypothesis extreme for the purposes of the book. 

For instance, during the scientific revolution, some of the first science fiction stories were written during the 1600s. One of them was written by the German mathematician Johannes Kepler: a story called Somnium. In that story Kepler imagines alien life on the moon. So, rather than putting it in a more academic way, a slow-burn argument as to Kepler’s place, position and contribution, my editor favoured the idea that Kepler invented the alien – which is a popularised shorthand. It struck me that that had a lot in common with the way one might report it in a journalistic way.

Also, when my editor sent me her instructions on how best to write popular science, it was a sheet for how to write better journalism. So the rules for popular science writing adopted by this publisher were the same as the rules that one would adopt to write popular journalism in science. So yes, there was the same tendency towards those kinds of values – i.e. simplification.

—-

Note to editors
RELATE is a project funded by the European Commission under the Science in Society research area of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Up to 80 young journalists will visit labs across Europe, interview researchers, then publish their findings. Their articles should ‘make sense of science’ for a non-specialist audience. Project partners include Minerva Consulting and Communication (Belgium), the European Journalism Centre (The Netherlands), and three European research bodies: ENEA (Italy), EPFL (Switzerland) and TÜBITAK (Turkey).

Flickr photo credit: Mtsofan

Posted on November 17, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under projects.